


Our only life is here

by irisdouglasiana



Category: The Musketeers (2014)
Genre: Gen, Pre-Season/Series 01
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-18
Updated: 2020-12-18
Packaged: 2021-03-11 03:02:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,388
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28157988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/irisdouglasiana/pseuds/irisdouglasiana
Summary: She cannot remember how it felt to die, but she remembers the terror of being revived.
Relationships: Armand Jean du Plessis de Richelieu & Milady Clarick de Winter, Athos | Comte de la Fère/Milady Clarick de Winter
Comments: 2
Kudos: 17





	Our only life is here

**Author's Note:**

> cw: brief, non-graphic mention of rape.

The Cardinal likes to say he pulled her out of the gutter. An embellishment, to be sure, but it has a purpose. It paints a particular image in the mind; it serves as a constant reminder of what she really is. Dress her up in satin and jewels, teach her the etiquette and turns of phrase that allow her to blend in seamlessly among her betters, but from the gutter she came, and of the gutter she remains. She will always be coarse and common, a streak of mud on the bottom of his fine leather boots.

But the things that come from the gutter can still have their uses, and so she makes herself useful to him. She is his creature and she has no past. Whoever she was, wherever she came from, it doesn’t matter. She serves him and him alone. This suits her perfectly well. There is no task he sets to her that she cannot accomplish, no rule she is unwilling to bend, no line that she refuses to cross. At the Cardinal’s behest, she cuts throats and whores herself out and steals and lies and ruins lives. She never feels a moment of guilt or regret. She takes pleasure where she can get it. She doesn’t look back, and in that way, they are the same.

Among certain quarters, she is rumored to be the Cardinal’s mistress—or, less charitably, his whore. She supposes she looks the part to outsiders, but she understands the Cardinal well enough to know that she does not suit his tastes. He likes blonds with large blue eyes, pretty playthings pushed eagerly into his bed by minor noble families with too many daughters. When he tires of them, he sends her to pay them a parting gift—a necklace, coins in a velvet bag, a small position for a grasping brother or ambitious father—and a warning to seek no additional favors. Or, should one turn out to be a spy for one of the Cardinal’s enemies, as is occasionally the case, the parting gift she brings is a bullet to the head or a cord around the neck. Those ones never seek additional favors after that.

She gives him some small advice after the second time this happens, though he is not interested in hearing it: _you tell your mistresses too much. Keep them for pleasure and nothing more._

In his usual clipped manner, he answers that he keeps her because she is a necessary tool and nothing more. One day, he will be done with her, just like any of his former mistresses. She tells him with a smile that she understands him perfectly. She does not tell him that if she is his tool then he is hers. His mistake is that like every mark, he believes himself cleverer than her, but she is his equal in intelligence, in ambition, in ruthlessness, and on some level he knows it. She does not fear him properly or regard him in awe. She is beyond his control in a way that others are not. It infuriates and fascinates him at the same time.

To his credit, the Cardinal does not lay one hand on her. He is not stupid enough to put her to the test in such a way. He must sense that the men who put their hands on her without her consent came to unfortunate ends, though he does not ask the details and she will not tell him: brother Thomas sitting down with his legs crossed and reading the story of her life out loud with a smirk on his face. Her real name, her parents’ names, her crimes, their crimes. _But_ , Thomas said, _I will say nothing to my brother; I will spare you the embarrassment of being thrown out and him the shame of being revealed to be a lovesick fool._ He did not wait for her answer before sliding his hand along her thigh.

Of course, she had been young back then, not much more than a girl. She took her lesson from Thomas and then from Athos and she learned it well. She would not make those same mistakes today. The older and wiser version of herself would have found a way to make Thomas’s death appear as an accident or framed him for some crime. She would have pleaded for his life, however; she would have begged the judge with tears in her eyes to spare him the headman’s axe and only put him in prison and let him rot behind bars for the rest of his life. Not for his hand on her thigh and up her skirt, but for his smirk, fat and self-satisfied.

As for Athos…well. He passed sentence on her, so she vows to pass sentence on him. She knows the places he inhabits in Paris, every nasty little tavern with rat droppings and stale beer pooled on the floor. He staggers from one to the next and she follows him, the man she loved, and she thinks about how she was begging in these same streets and cutting purses to feed herself while he was taking lessons in Latin and Greek and learning how to ride. Athos has never known hunger or thirst; he has never once given thought to his great luck to be born the Comte de Fere, and why would he? But look at him now.

She makes herself known to him only one time: passed out yet again in an alley, the empty bottle still in his hand, eyes rolled all the way back. If it weren’t for the slight rise and fall of his chest, one might have mistaken him for dead. She strode down the alley, drew her knife, and bent down.

He opened his eyes and blinked when he heard her approach. “Anne,” he groaned, reaching out to her. “ _Anne._ ” He thought he was dreaming. He would not remember that he saw her when he emerged from his stupor in the morning.

She could have cut his throat and freed herself from him forever. It would have been so easy. It was no less than what he deserved: a death without honor behind some nameless tavern in Paris, noble blood staining the cobblestones. Instead, she had sheathed her knife and walked away. (She did take his purse, at least. No reason to pass that up.) She tells herself later that there was no point in killing Athos when he was in such a state. A man should understand he is about to die, and why.

She leaves him and goes back to her new old life; she wears fine clothes and charms her way through the most fashionable salons and sees the streets of Paris through different eyes. Sometimes she suddenly wakes from a deep sleep, clawing at her neck and gasping for air. She cannot remember how it felt to die, but she remembers the terror of being revived. In one moment of vulnerability, late at night in the Cardinal’s study, she confesses to him that some part of her is dead. Something else has been born in its place. She doesn’t know what it is.

The Cardinal doesn’t ignore her or brush her off. He sits back in his chair and merely regards her, and at last he asks, “Does that frighten you?”

She knows she has said too much. She has opened the door to questions she is not prepared to answer—not to him, not to herself. So she smiles and gives him half a shrug. “I find it invigorating,” she lies.

“Ah,” he says with a raised eyebrow. He doesn’t believe her. She supposes she wouldn’t either. The silence between them thickens and curdles. She watches the most powerful man in France as he watches her and she thinks, _I have survived everything else, and I will survive you._

The Cardinal turns back to his papers and dismisses her without a word. He twists the ring on his finger and strokes his beard. He signs his name to some piece of correspondence and presses his seal to the page. _Let it be done._ By the time he looks up again, she is long gone: back to the street, back to the gutter, doing his bidding under a dark moonless sky.


End file.
